Making Lychgate Part I: The Map

Medieval Riga, Seat of the head of the real Sword Brothers

This is the first in a series of posts where I want to outline a playable version of the city of Lychgate, the seat of the bishopric that includes the territory of Nightwick Abbey.  I have technically run it before but only in very vague terms. I want to correct that and also just have a city of my own make to run city adventures in.

Specifically I want it to be an adventure site, but perhaps a little less chaotic than the City State of the Invincible Overlord.  The first season of Netflix's Castlevania series has a scene where some priests try to mug a guy, which is about right.

I was originally inspired to do this by Jeff Russell's Middenheim project, as well as the original presentation of Middenheim and Chris Kutalik's Fever Dreaming Marlinko. More recently I've been running the City State of the Invincible Overlord again and am debating incorporating some aspects of that into my presentation. I'm still on the fence about some aspects, and part of the purpose of doing these posts is to make up my mind one way or the other.

On to the map.  I knew I wanted a map in some way based off of Riga because, as I noted in the caption to the picture, it was the seat of the real world Livonian Brothers of the Sword.  However I had to  make it line up with the River Deep and Dark River as they appear on the "official" Dark Country map.  When I was still thinking of primarily designing it by district, I turned it on its side and made this:

The districts are...

Red - The Fires (once slums but then a series of fires occurred allowing the Bishop room to build a new palace and his cronies some nice houses).

Purple - The Low District (Slums)

Orange - The Old Fortress (Middle Class and Upper Residential)
Yellow - The New City (Middle and Lower Residential and market area)

Blue - The Market District (Duh)

Green - The Shanty Town (totally burned to the ground the last time the PCs visited, likely rebuilt by refugees after the recent battle).

These are still going to be the district locations in the final version, but I debated doing a more CSIO-style street by street stocking and made this map just yesterday:

I have a hand written version with a couple of the unnamed streets on here named but no scanner.  In hindsight I have decided to rename the Street of Swords Half Moon Street.

If I end up focusing on districts then I wasted some time coming up with street names.  If I do the more CSIO model I'll still need the districts for encounter table purposes so it was worth my time.  The next couple of posts likely won't need me to make a decision one way or the other anyway.

Next up will be an overview of the city, the watch, and religion.

A Map of the Karslish Isles

Click to Embiggen

This is a map of Karse and its neighboring islands.  The the North lie the Northern Isles, to the northeast is the largest northern isle known as Dogger Isle, to the southeast is Yseleg Mon, to the south is the Isle of Wights, and to the west is Brasil.

The southeast quadrant was meant to be the bit that contained the hex descriptions I wrote, as well as the capital of Nindol; however, the process of making the map made me realize I probably can't chunk the campaign into different quadrants and so those hexes are going to be spread around the main island.

Regions of the main island include the Tamesa Mountains, the Darkmoor, the Tulgey Wood, the Northern Marshes, and the Black Cliffs of Vore.

Dark Country Maps (Again)

I have mostly migrated my discussion of maps to G+, but since that's ending I thought I'd better stop posting about them here again.

The Master Map

The canon/official/whatever version of the Dark Country map is the master map pictured above.  It is based a combination of the Baltic Coast and Transylvania.  The master map currently notes the location of the 7 cities and most of their village protectorates, the location of pagan villages, and ruins the players have visited or that I know exist.

A Digital Recreation of the Master Map

The digital recreation of the master map is a working map I use for when I'm writing adventures or typing stuff.  I thas more settlements on it but I am unsure if I will maintain their current positions since the PCs have not yet been to them.  In making this map I found that the Lychgate Bishopric map (see below) I've used for so long is slightly off, but it's close enough for horseshoes.

Players' Map for the Bishopric of Lychgate

This is the latest version of the map my players most often interact with.  It's even labeled with stuff!  A key for an older version can be found here.

The World of Nightwick

The World of Nightwick Map is my current idea for the areas around Nightwick.  They are...

Clear - The Realm (Two duchies represented on this map)Hills - Vulgary (Formerly the Iron Kingdoms)Snowfields - NovgovyMountains - AtaliaDead Forest - The Dark CountryGlaciers - MuscorodForest - CuccagnaBroken Land - the BorderlandsGrassland - The SteppeDesert - The Desert LandsScrubland - ZenopolisDesert (again) - The Desert Lands (Again)

Not pictured are Karse, Averois, Cathay, and Noppin.  I've been working on a map of Karse and have worked up a map for a single lordship of Noppin (the island of Kokushi) but they are beyond the scope of this post.

Here, Have a Map

When I was running the Wilderlands a while back I decided an easy way to get interesting maps would be to convert maps from the Doom, Doom 2, and Final Doom so that they could be easily represented on twiddla.  Since I was copying them from various wikis I wasn't necessarily sure where the entrances and secret doors were 100% of the time.

Anyway, since I can't do anything else with them I decided to start posting them on her after I work them up in gridmapper.

Note to my players: it is highly likely that I will still use these maps at some point in the foreseeable future, so you might not want to look too hard at them.

Cocanha Playtest Campaign

I've obviously stolen the format from Chris Kutalik, but here are the notes for the setting I'll be using for my playtests of our medievalist game.

This map is a rough draft.

Cocanha
This campaign is centered around the Cocanha, a fictional island in the Mediterranean off the coast of France.  Much of the island is covered in a mix of farm and scrubland, though its southern portion is home to both a mountain range and a dense forest.  Cocanha is strongly tied to both Occitania and Catalonia, though it also possesses a Muslim past and a small tribe of Basque-like people known as the Yaones.  The people of Cocanha speak a dialect of Occitan known as Cocanhat.

PCs are likely to be members of the same knightly household.

Local Names
Medieval Nicknames

News
Bishop Uc has formed a militia known as the Brotherhood of God with the express purpose of enforcing the Peace of God and eliminating heresy.  He has asked both of the barons to join him, but neither seems interested in stopping their petty squabbles or rooting out Cathars.

Sangriu has been the site of a number of raids by Xabier the Snake in recent weeks.  Folquet is looking for mercenaries to help reinforce his own forces and for stout men willing to find Xabier’s camp.  The knight believes that the infamous bandit is testing the border for weaknesses.

A man claiming to be the bastard son of Baron Ramon has captured the village of Ervesa with the aid of a band of Yaon mercenaries.  It seems they have slaughtered the manor’s holder and captured the maiden Anor, daughter of Baron Bernatz.  The Wolf has offered a large purse and a small manor to anyone able to rescue his daughter.

Father Perrin, chaplin to Baron Bernatz, seeks pious men to investigate the death of his brother.  Many claim that the man was slain by God on High - or one of His saints - but the priest is convinced that his death is the work of the Devil.

Boamundus, a legendary giant said to live in the mountains on the southern side of the island, has been sighted again for the first time in one hundred years.  He has reportedly been stealing cattle from the villages closest to Castel de Calanha.  Several of the manor lords seek champions to win the cattle back.

NPCs
Baron Bernatz The Wolf is the lord of Ezorre.  It is well known that he has ambitions on the continent, and he has left the island at several points to fight on behalf of his liege lord, the count of Toulouse.  

Baron Ramon is the lord of Calanha.  He is the scion of a cadet branch of the Trencavel family, and like the Trencavels of the continent he is an ally of the King of Aragon.  Ramon fancies himself a troubadour of some skill.

Bishop Uc d’Alcazar is the head of the diocese of Cochana.  He is officious, petty, and fiercely anti-Cathar.

Xabier the Snake is the leader of a small group of Yaones that act as bandits operating out of the forests and mountains in the southern part of the island.

Sir Folquet of Sangriu is a banneret to Baron Bernatz and the man usually tasked with leading any of the baron’s forces left on the island while the Wolf is fighting his wars on the continent.

Father Perrin is Baron Bernatz’s chaplin and also serves as secular ruler of the barony while his lord is away.  

Saints of Cocanha
St. Cecilia
St. Foy
St. Martha
St. Sergius Paulus
St. Sebastian

Places

The Barony of Ezorre
Castel d’Ezorre
The seat of Baron Bernatz and the center of government for the entire barony, Castel d’Ezorre is a stone castle of modest sized on the northernmost tip of the island.  Ezorre was originally a timber castle built in the ruins of an old Roman fort, Bernatz’s father had it rebuilt and incorporate much of the Roman architecture into the new structure.

Banneret Manors
Sangriu
Andaro
Ervesa

The Barony of Calanha
Castel de Calanha
This keep acts as the center of the Barony of Calanha.  It is of fairly recent construction, having been built to protect against raids by Mediterranean pirates.

Banneret Manors
Fabero
Nabiras 







 


The Bishopric of Cocanha

Alcazar

Alcazar was the center of government on the island during its occupation by the Moors.  It still acts as both the commercial and religious center, and is the easiest place to find passage to the continent or to the island monastery of Lampisors.

Monasteries
Egleisia
Lampisors

Making a Dark Country Wilderness Map Take 2

As some of you may already know, the G+ D&D games I run are currently on hiatus.  I got a bit burned out, but not so much that I want to hang my hat up altogether.  Instead, I've been tinkering around with my settings trying to make a milieu that I would use every single time I want to run D&D.  

I wanted it to be something like Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: fairly geographically limited but conceptually large enough to house the bizarre mixture of Hammer Horror, 50s sci fi, Clark Ashton Smith, Tolkien, and Vance I enjoy.  At this point, I've more or less decided that the Dark Country is my setting. So it's the one I'm most focused on tweaking at the moment.

One thing that attracted me to my Cuccagna idea was the presence of water.  I remember really liking how much water was on the old Wilderlands maps because it gave them a very Sinbad the Sailor sort of vibe.  The PCs might come ashore on a small island that has a bit Harryhausen-style golem on it or something else cool.  However, my two big settings - the Dark Country and Uz - both lack a large amount of water.  So I decided to add some.

Dave Arneson based his original map of Blackmoor on a map of the Netherlands.  I thought I'd do the same thing, but with a different region.  The Proto-Dark Country game originally took place in an analog for the Baltic, but I didn't like how flat the region was so I later changed to Romania.  Well I decided yesterday to look up some maps of the Baltic - since it's a sea and obviously would have water - and I found this:

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Almost immediately I noticed that the forest in the southeastern corner of the map had a fairly similar shape to the Carpathian Mountains.  At that point I decided to combine the two.  This is the result:

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The astute observer will note that the southeastern quarter of my map is more or less the same as the one I worked up in April.  This is intentional as it represents the parts of the setting that have actually seen any amount of play.  The other quarters are still subject to change, especially the southwestern one, but this gets across the general idea I think.

Note that the newly added sea already existed, I just shifted it a bit from its original position.  It's called the Starry Sea, and here are some notes I worked up for it several months ago:

The Starry Sea is actually a large, deep lake that formed when a glacier melted several millennia ago.  Strange lights occasionally stir in the deeper waters, and few sailors will willingly cross it from end to end.

Not sure if I'll be sticking with that, but there you go.

I'm still working on the theoretical structure that ties all of my influences together, but I'm definitely happier with the map.

Cuccagna Map, the Lapis Vaults, and Outdoor Regions

I'm still enjoying working on Cuccagna, despite my best efforts to turn my attention elsewhere.  Anyway, here is the current version of the map with the Great Wen, the castles of the various Prosperoes, and the "I don't know what to do today so let's go to the dungeon" dungeon noted on it.

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The aforementioned dungeon is probably going to be called the Lapis Vaults, and it is the former manse of the now AWOL Prospero the Blue.  The Vaults are rumored to be filled with various treasures and hideous monsters created by the missing wizard.  I've been trying to sketch some dungeon maps for it, but it's been slow going because I'm an insecure perfectionist.  

Once they're finished I can start slimming down the monster list by seeing what I put in the dungeon.  Outside of dungeons, I've decided to definitely go for individual monsters.  The Dragon of Cuccagna is the Dragon of Cuccagna, as is the Cyclops and the Unicorn.  There will be some monstrous races, but they'll be largely defined by certain geographic regions.

Speaking of regions, here are some proposed names for the various regions on the above map:

The Forest of Delights

The Swamp of Cudgels

The Riddle Wood

The Forest of Coincidences

The Field of Fortune

The Plain of Plans

The Tired Towers

That's not every feature, and I might get rid of one of the forests to make room for the Saturnine Swamp, but I think it's a good place to get started.

Hand Drawn Lychgate Map

This is the current working map for Lychgate, rendered in the style of Huge Ruined Scott's Dwarf-Land map, except for the settlements which use the key from the Rules Cyclopedia.  It only has those features that the PCs in my G+ Nightwick Abbey game, and therefore it lacks pagan villages, ruins, and monster lairs. 

click to embiggen

Once I have more of the hex contents figured out, I plan to redraw it to fix some of the little mistakes I made on this one and to use some more "iconic imagery" for the settlements.  When I do that one I'll start with the settlements first so that they don't get screwed up by the landscape like the castle in 0816 and Nightwick Abbey (1607).

I haven't labeled anything yet because my handwriting is absolutely abysmal - it took all my ability to write the name of the map in a way other human beings can read.  The swamp is the Great Swamp, the forest in the eastern section is the Fog-Bound Forest, the mountains are the Nameless Mountains, and the forest in the north is the Witchwood.

One final note: my use of the ACKS hex paper does not mean I'm using that system. Their sub-regional hex paper just happens to be about 1/4 the size of the larger Judges Guild paper. This allows me to break it down into manageable chunks, but will hopefully later allow me to have a Wilderlands map of my very own. 

Greyhawk Maps

Here are some old maps I made back when I was running my version of Greyhawk.  As with so much I do, these use the Welsh Piper's map templates.

The one above was the map we were going to use to divide up the setting.

This one was my section (Greyhawk and its environs).

Mappa Mundi

Several months ago, I said I would make a post about what makes a good fantasy map.  At the time, I would have said that utility is the highest good.  A gaming map should ultimately be usable at the table, and as such its primary purpose is to display the distances between two points so that the travel time and the number of random encounters that will occur between the two can be determined.  However, almost a year later I have come to a different conclusion: every campaign setting needs two maps.

The first should be more or less what I described above.  I'd prefer a true hex map, but different configurations are possible.  The ultimate goal of such a map is to display distances and to help determine what random encounter charts the referee needs to roll on.*  If it can also be pretty that's cool too, but utility is far more important.

The second map is the setting's equivalent of a mappa mundi.  For those unfamiliar with the concept, a mappa mundi is a type of highly symbolic map used throughout the middle ages.  The one pictured above is particularly famous for its detail, but simpler designs also exist.  Mappa mundi  are not meant to get you from point A to point B.  Instead, they are meant to convey ideological information.  The most simple ones show how the sons of Noah spread across the three continents, and more complex ones can tell the entire story of man from the Garden of Eden to the Apocalypse.

For gaming purposes I mean something a bit more like this:

This map doesn't do a terribly good job of telling you how far the Gates of the Moon are from Runestone but does tell you something about the character of the place and the people who live there.  This is often difficult if not impossible to achieve with a typical hex map.  Plus, this style of map is just more pleasing to the eye.

A good example of a setting that uses both is Harn.  First, we have Harn's hex map:

While not a true hex map in the way Erin of the Welsh Piper uses the term, one can still uses this map to figure out how much time it will take to get from one point to another and to generate encounters over that period.  One also gets a sense of how much farmland is present, which is a rare thing for a gaming map to do.  

Now the mappa mundi:

This map is much better for giving Harn a sense of place, even if it lacks the utility of the earlier version.

Sadly, my talents are much better suited for the more hum drum sort of maps, even if I do admire mappa mundi.  I may attempt one anyway, but my cartoony style will likely be a poor fit for the tangled forests and squalid cities of the Dark Country.

ConstantCon SuperWorld

Inspired kinda sorta by Grumpy Old Troll, I have an idea for a project that's probably of no use to anyone but amuses me.  I want to stitch together all the wilderness maps from various judges' ConstantCon campaigns into one big map.  It would probably look something like this  only done in Hexographer.

It's probably too much of a headache to work out, but that doesn't mean I'm not stupid enough to give it a few attempts.

Thoughts on Maps and the Dark Country

After doing some math,* I've come to the conclusion that the Welsh Piper Hex Templates are the best thing ever.  I was already fond of them, but I more or less used them while wishing I had a bad-ass Judges Guild map to use instead.  However, my sloppy number crunching revealed some things to me that might make me prefer Erin's.

First, the "continent" level is just big enough to hold the areas of France and Britain combined.  There is also some room left over for the channel, but you'd probably have to move parts of Scotland off of the map to really get the amount of water that surrounds Britain.  The point is that it easily fits two fairly large kingdoms who can slug at each other constantly, or perhaps even more smaller ones.  But it doesn't end there.  The "regional" level maps are only a tiny bit smaller than the estimated size of the Duchy of Normandy.  Each one of these represents either a powerful magnate's demesne or a smallish kingdom.

Whether or not this was intentional, it provides a great deal more structure than using Wilderlands maps.  I can guesstimate** their size now that I know how large Erin's templates are, but I don't really have as good of an idea of what a single map represents.  Also, the Welsh Piper templates happen to match up to the sizes of areas I'm familiar with historically, so it's a bit easier for me to figure out how many cities and castles they should contain.  I'll still have to rely at least somewhat on other methods, but that certainly helps.

If one thinks about the number of cultures that existed in both Britain and France in the Middle Ages, one can easily see that an "atlas" level map is probably large enough to last any DM the entirety of his or her career.  Admittedly, this does not incorporate flights of fancy that might make him or her want to run something set in a totally different kind of milieu, but as long as he or she is content with whatever kind of setting he or she set up in the first place it should provide a framework for innumerable campaigns.

With this new information under my belt, I'm going to try and remap the Dark Country.  Longtime readers will know that I am constantly tweaking every map I make -- which is part of the fun -- but this is going to be a major overhaul.  I want the "atlas" map to include large parts of the West, the entirety of the Dark Country, and small slivers of Zenopolis and Novgova.  Those are the four areas I'm most interested in running campaigns in, and it makes a kind of rough sense that they would be next to each other.

I'll be doing the mapping by hand because I've become enamored with colored pencil maps like these two.  Since I don't have a scanner, you're not likely to see these in the immediate future; however, I do hope to be able to present them at some point.

One last note unrelated to maps:  I've more or less decided the rough historical date for the Dark Country would be the first half of the 14th century.  This is a bit outside of my normal time frame, but the Sword Brothers represent the Teutonic Knights c. 1250, and I want them to be in the past.  I'm a bit more comfortable making a fantasy setting move at a glacial pace than I would be if this was a historical setting, but I do think that settings need to change over time.***

* I'm really really really bad at math, so if I'v made a mistake let me know.

**Chrome's spell check recognizes guesstimate as a word.

***Not necessarilly published settings.  I hate metaplot as much as the next guy, but if every campaign in the same setting resets to status quo ante bellum, then it starts to feel too artificial.  These changes are for the individual group to make, and it is best if they are created by player action.

Greyhawk Farms Redux

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The above map only shows the settlements the PCs would be vaguely aware of.  This time, I stocked the map using a combination of methods.  First, I used my old standby the Welsh Piper's Hex Based Campaign Design system.  I decided that the major settlements would all be cities while minor settlements will all be towns instead of villages.  I got one major settlement (which was obviously going to be Greyhawk) and two minor ones.  I determined their populations using the system in the Greyhawk folio.

Now I wanted to determine where the farmland was.  It seemed like it would be difficult to wed the Hex Based Campaign Design system with the Welsh Piper's equally excellent Medieval Demographics tool.  Instead, I decided to use Rob Conley's figures for use with the Wilderlands.  Since his numbers were largely based on Judges Guild material, I figured they'd be a better fit for a more fantastic setting like Greyhawk.  I figured out the number of 5 mile hexes needed to feed the populations of each of the above settlements.  Then I just placed that many hexes of farmland around each settlement.  

Now, the overly meticulous regular readers may think to themselves "but Evan, wouldn't the hexes on this map be 6 miles, not 5?"  Right you are!  However, I'm lazy and I figured it was better to skew high and assume that the people of Greyhawk, Wizard's Bridge, and Blackleg sold the excess or used it to feed the men stationed at Portsmouth Castle.  

This method is not precise by any means, but it makes slightly more sense than just having an isolated settlement with no farmland whatsoever.  It also allows me to maintain a certain amount of wildness to the setting, which I enjoy.

Another Map Experiment

I think it's fairly clear that the rather famous Greyhawk map doesn't show but a small portion of the total settlements in Greyhawk.  Otherwise, Furyondy is a barren wasteland, as is most of the rest of the World of Greyhawk.  As such, I felt I should develop the settlements around my campaign area.  For the most part, the players have yet to go outside the two hexes containing Greyhawk and the infamous castle.

Assuming we go with my plan, here is what the countryside around Greyhawk might look like:

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I somewhat followed the Welsh Piper's automated system, but I halved the amount of farmland in accordance with a post by Rob Conley I can't seem to find.  I also fudged a bit so that I'd have to detail slightly fewer towns.  The area on the Greyhawk side of the Nyr Dyv relies on farming feeholders rather than a manorial system.  As such, It would have significantly fewer villages than the Furyondy side.

I'm not entirely happy with it, but I can't quite put my finger on why.

(Really Ugly) Map Experiment

I recently mentioned that I've become interested in the Harn setting.  This happens to me from time to time, probably because it tickles some part of my medievalist brain.  Still, whenever the Harn bug bites I find myself wanting to create my own low fantasy world rather than use Harn wholesale.  I think it's largely due to my distaste at the idea of Tolkien's Dwarves and Elves running around my twelfth-century England or France.

Enter The Welsh Piper's Medieval Demographics Online.  Erin had pointed me to it when I asked about farmland in the Dark Country.  At the time, I was working on a much more High/Dark Fantasy setting; however, it seems like the perfect thing to scratch my current itch.

As an experiment, I decided to make a small island based on the island of Sark.  Mine was considerably larger, but it still serves as an acceptable test run.  I guesstimated the area, assumed that it would be a rocky and inhospitable island, and punched in the numbers.  Here is the result:

The Town contains a little more than 3000 people, and the surrounding farmland (the green hexes) contains some 69 villages.  The Keep probably serves to keep some small humanoid tribe that lairs in the heath or the hills from carting off villagers.

I must say that I don't entirely like the look of it yet.  I'm beginning to think the "Mystara Style," as Rob Conley termed it, is a poor match for a setting where one must map farmland.  There just seems to be something off about the farms covering whole hexagons.

I'm also not entirely sure how a DM whose pressed for time, as I am, would detail 69 villages, but maybe that'll be the subject of another post.

City States of Arklyrell: Mystara Style

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A few months ago Jeff suggested using City States of Arklyrell as a campaign map.  I then posted some thoughts on using it as a setting.  I found that the images of the map on the internet are a bit hard to make out, so I decided to provide the above map for those wishing to use it.

The "glacier" hexes at the top represent a wall of ice that covers the frozen side of the planet.  Any terrain off the map either to the North or the South is completely inhospitable to life (other than Elves in the North and Undead in the South).

I may post more ideas on the setting later.

Upcoming Greyhawk Campaign

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It looks like the Nightwick campaign is slowly drawing to a close.  One of my players who used to DM for the group I'm currently in has expressed interest in co-DMing a Greyhawk campaign, and I'm happy to oblige.  The above map is a microscale (six miles to a small hex) version of the area around Greyhawk city itself.  It's likely that for the foreseeable future the campaign won't leave those environs.

We've decided to split up campaign responsibilities.  I'll be making a a version of Castle Greyhawk using a combination of new things and unused Nightwick Abbey stuff.  My fellow DM will more or less be running adventures in the wilderness around the city.  We're free to switch that if need be, but I think the division will help us to better organize things.

At the end of each session I hope to be able to ascertain what the group plans on doing for the next session.  That way we can decide who needs to get ready for next time.

Nightwick Abbey isn't permanently shelved, but I do look forward to this project as both a needed change of pace and a chance to be a player (sometimes).

How Much Farmland is Enough Farmland?

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Above is a recent iteration of my Dark Country map.  The green hexes represent the area cultivated by the nearby settlements.  Each hex is 6 miles across (to match the B/X movement rates).  I decided on the amount of farmland in a completely arbitrary manner, but it largely came from the fact that my earlier attempts (using 10 mile hexes) were a bit too big.  Here the farming production has doubled but the size of a hex is smaller.   I also spitballed a bit based on Rob Conley's figures.

Still, I'm very unsure about the level of settlement in the Dark Country.  It's supposed to be a Pagan Wilderness, and it relies primarily on trade and forest products rather than agriculture (the large amount of precipitation makes it poor farming land), but compared to Blackmoor or the Wilderlands settlements are sparse.  Granted one can assume that hamlets and thorps dot the little green hexes, but for the most part theres only a small concentration of "cities" (they'd be towns in any other D&D setting) and walled villages.  Right now -- unless I miscounted -- there are only 17 villages and towns on this whole map.  Is that too low?

What do you think it says?

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I'm not the first person to post this picture or to notice the oddness of his key.  Rob Conley has discussed minimalist dungeon keys before and my notes more or less look like what he describes, but they're verbose compared to what Gygax has in front of him there.  So my question to you is, what the hell could those say that would allow him to run the whole level?

this blowup doesn't help

It's interesting to note that he more or less does what I've been doing with Nightwick Abbey: he fills a sheet of graph paper full of rooms and corridors until they won't fit anymore.  Mine isn't quite as crowded, but it looks like more or less the same scale of graph paper (6 to 1").  This makes the fact that he can run it with so little even more perplexing to me.

Someone in the comments of one of Jeff's old posts suggested that those maps -- which are very similar and also from Gygax's hand -- might only list "important rooms" but that seems strange to me since it's not like this is In Search of the Unknown where the DM is expected to fill out the rest.  This is it being run by a DM.

On a tangentially related note, I've been working on some new maps for Nightwick Abbey and I'll try to post some pictures of the first three levels in the next few days.

Current State of the Dark Country Map

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This has several very minor changes from previous attempts.  Some of these came about due to errors I made while transferring it to a physical Judges Guild Hexmap.  The others were mainly so that I could enlarge some of the settings forests and have to come up with fewer encounter tables.   This includes both settler and pagan towns, villages, and castles.  You'll also notice a few ruins, but I haven't come up with as many adventure locals as I would like yet.  

Eventually I'll use the other hexsheet I have to do a super-mega fancy version of the map and post it (either scanned or in photo form) up here.  My current one is very workmanlike and more for use at the table than for looking fancy.